Crime and punishment

Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life (640)
Crime and punishment
Laws were frequently broken in Egypt in the 1930s. Theft, drugs and matters of the heart were the major problem areas covered by Al-Ahram, presented as they happened by Professor Yunan Labib Rizk
The 1930s was a period during which a number of changes took place in the form and content of Al-Ahram. Yet the paper, in keeping with its nature, made these changes in noticeable gradation. The saying that it was always a newspaper of "tradition" stemmed from the fact that its editorial board did not like to unexpectedly surprise its readers with what they were not used to. This led it to represent a "school of journalism" that avoided screaming transformations, a school that at times vied with newspapers that did employ this method. Yet Al-Ahram remained permanent, while this other kind of paper was temporary, resembling the kind of women who exaggerate their beautification but when their make-up and ornamentation is removed, admirers look elsewhere.
Some of the changes made to the paper affected the inner pages, including page 12, which usually hosted two columns, one titled "Incidents in Cairo" and the other "Incidents in the provinces". Readers of Al-Ahram during that period must have noticed that changes were made to the "News of incidents" in the mid-1930s. After having been published as short news items that never surpassed a few lines per incident, the editor began to select some of them to conduct a journalistic investigation of that would occupy a considerable area of the page.
This selection was governed by a number of considerations, including the spread of a crime to a degree requiring explanation, the oddity of an incident calling attention to it, and a desire to warn against falling into the snares of criminals.
STEALING WAS THE TYPE OF INCIDENT that received the most attention from the editor of this section. He was concerned with all things provocative in this kind of crime, including an investigation titled "A school to train children to steal -- the teacher [of thievery] and his child students apprehended".
The story began with a girl looking down from the balcony of her home on a street in the Sayeda Zeinab neighbourhood and seeing a small body drop into the water pipes on the rear side of the house. She alerted her family, who went out and waited near where the pipes end. The person who had descended into the pipe was a child no older than 10 who had tucked under his arm a bundle of stolen clothes. The family seized him after he tried to escape, and handed him over to the Sayeda Zeinab police station where the editor of the incidents page in Al-Ahram was crouching in wait. There he was faced with a surprise that he chose to present to Al-Ahram readers in the form of an investigation.
He mentioned that although in the beginning the boy refused to speak, he was able to make him open up in the end. He said that there was a secret school directed by a person called "Mohamed the idiot." Its students consisted of 20 children "who learn all the fundaments of the profession of stealing. They are trained to climb pipes, how to mislead the police, and to flee with stolen goods." The young thief added that the "teacher" awarded those who succeeded with certificates as proof that they had completed their education. Yet he punished the inattentive by locking them into a dark room and beating them every evening in front of their colleagues.
In terms of the dealings between the two parties, the young thieves handed over their stolen goods they returned with to the teacher, who gave them a monthly salary of 150 piastres distributed in daily allotments. They all slept in the school, which was located among ruins, on a bed that was nothing but an old mat. Students who failed in their mission to steal had to spend the night in the streets in fear of what awaited him from "the idiot."
The final section of the investigation was narrated by the Al-Ahram editor who accompanied the force that was able to arrest the teacher and a number of the young thieves. A large quantity of stolen goods was seized, and everyone was handed over to the prosecutor. The school was closed down, but until when is not known.
Under the title "Burglary of the home of the aide-de-camp of King Ibn Saud -- the thieves differed and thus the stolen goods came to light", the editor followed the story of the burglary of the home of "Ibrahim Sarmad Effendi, the former aide-de- camp of His Majesty Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud, the King of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." He had travelled with his family to spend a few days in Alexandria and they had left their home under the protection of their servant, who frequented Sayeda Zeinab's night life. There he met two young men who went with him to the empty home where they were given to drinking alcohol and having relations with women. One night, while the servant was preoccupied with one of these women, the two men who had a criminal history of thievery, grabbed the opportunity to open the house's closets and steal their contents, including clothes and silver tableware. They placed this into two large bags and tied the rest into two bundles. When the servant became aware of this, he did not oppose the burglary but rather agreed to join in with them. He was sure that what he would reap from this loot would free him of his need for work.
After the thieves deposited their stolen goods with some of their acquaintances, the process of splitting things up began, and this is the point they differed on. The thieves wanted to fool the servant and claimed that the two bags had been lost and all that remained were the two bundles. This led to a verbal match, intensified by the fact that the acquaintances with whom the stolen goods had been deposited wanted a share of the loot as well. The argument was overheard by a seller passing by who notified the police station, which sent a force that quickly apprehended the thieves.
While an investigation was under way with them in the presence of the Al-Ahram incidents editor, the home owner was summoned from Alexandria and the stolen goods were counted and estimated at a value of LE8. After presenting all of these details on the case, the editor ended his investigation with a warning to readers not to leave their homes unguarded.
The strangest of the investigations published in the incidents page of Al-Ahram was that about a thug who wanted to occupy a home he had rented from its owner in Hadayeq Al-Qubba. After he had delayed paying his rent for several months, and under pressured insistence, the landlord was surprised by the "good" tenant frankly telling him, "I won't hide it from you. Your fate is a thug who has sold his soul. If you want me to show you what I mean, I have no objection." Then he got up and beat his head against the wall until blood exploded from a deep wound. He then screamed, "So what do you think? Should I go to the police station right now and say you beat me, or would it be better for you to leave the rent?" The landlord agreed to the peaceful solution, "better to leave the rent", and signed a receipt for the thug for the rent of the months that had passed.
Another month went by and apparently the man had conferred with his family who had blamed him for conceding his rights, as he decided to demand them this time. When he approached the thug to demand his rent, the thug said to him, "have you forgotten or what? You don't know what's involved, and you don't want to find yourself in jail." Yet the landlord did not concede his rights this time -- all he accepted was to grant some time to the tenant who wanted to take over his home.
At midnight that same day, flames of fire broke out in the home. It was a limited and intentional fire that the tenant quickly put out with the help of some of the neighbours. Afterwards, he went to the police station and accused the landlord of purposely setting his home on fire because he was late in paying his rent. The poor man was summoned and of course denied the accusation, saying it was unreasonable he would set the home he owns on fire. Following the investigation and the testimony of the neighbours, the truth was revealed and the man finally succeeded in evicting the thug who had tried to occupy his home. The incidents editor ended the journalistic investigation with advice to readers not to rent their homes to anyone they had not made inquires about. (This is advice that has lost its meaning since the developments that have befallen relations between owners and renters).
Armed robbery was also an object of interest in the investigations of Al-Ahram 's incidents page. One was presented under the headline "Human massacre -- the first suspect led the way to his cohorts". The crime in short was the discovery of two prostitutes and their servant killed by strangling and stabbing in their home in Tanta. It was of such concern to officials that the investigations on it took place under the supervision of the director and deputy director of the Al-Gharbiya directorate.
After being arrested, a public clerk who frequented the home admitted that he had spent the greater part of the evening with two others who frequent the place and revealed their names, Amin Youssef and Awad Adib. It seems that the latter frequented one of the nearby brothels, and its proprietor testified that she had seen the two men leave the home of the slain women at six in the morning, when the police arrested them. The other denied his being labelled, however, claiming that he had come to visit a relative of his, the building owner.
As investigations continued, Abdel-Wahab Suleiman El-Munagid testified that he had seen the suspects purchasing a large pocket knife from an itinerant merchant for five piastres. Finally, the perpetrators admitted they had committed the crime with the goal of theft for they had been tempted by the jewellery worn by the two women. The homeowner wore 12 bangles, two bracelets, a necklace, and four earrings of gold that she had purchased one day before the incident. As for her tenant, whose name was Wadida, she wore six bracelets, a necklace, and earrings of gold. "The jewellery altogether was estimated at a value surpassing LE200."
Although the investigation's author admitted that women of this class enjoy material wealth, he warned against the evil consequences of following this path.
A final strange tale from the world of thieves narrated by Al-Ahram 's incidents page was about a pickpocket who claimed he was the legendary figure from Arab heritage, Antar Bin Shaddad. He was arrested in Queen Farida Square (Green Ataba) as he was attempting to pickpocket a passerby. When he was led to the police station, the first thing he said was, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Antar Bin Shaddad. Let me go, or I'll tear this station down!" He grabbed some pieces of iron that had been seized in a case of theft and threw them at the soldiers and other people present. Then he proceeded to break the chairs and violently smash his head against the wall, causing himself serious injury. Following his emergency treatment, he held fast to his claim that he was Antar and the commander of the legendary Beni Hilal army. After he was referred to a doctor who ascertained that he was not mad, it was discovered that he was an ex-convict and had found no other means to flee this time than to claim that he was Antar, a claim helped by his strong build.
CRIMES OF A SOCIAL CHARACTER occupied second place in the incident investigations. These were crimes that could have been placed in an encyclopaedia of "the oddities of Egyptians".
Among them was a story about a man who married 30 women. The story goes that he was a trader in the countryside, and every time he arrived in a new town he married a woman and spent some time with her and then divorced her and married another. His profits were high, which allowed him to commit to the costs of the alimony rulings his former wives had issued against him. He had 80 children, although he hardly knew them "and the children didn't know one another."
At 85, his age forced him to stop moving between towns and to settle down in Cairo, after he persuaded his three wives to remain with him. Yet his matrimonial side urged him to secretly seek a new wife, until he was led to a girl of 16 and engaged her from her parents who agreed in view of his wealth. Although he concealed the issue, news of it spread and incited the fury of some of his children, who submitted a complaint to the Al-Ezbekiya prosecutor stating that their father had had 80 children and that he did not know most of them.
The old man replied to the prosecutor, "as long as I have money and there are girls who want to marry me, at this age I must renew my youth." When his children sought the aid of some relatives, he gave a response stranger than the first, for he said with pride, "How can the government say that it wants to form an army? Well, I, right now, am capable of donating 60 soldiers for the national defence -- can anyone else do this?" He was certain that there wasn't.
The same model was repeated in Mit Ghamr, with a young man who inherited a fortune from his father and spent it on numerous marriages, reaching a total of 21, until he was imprisoned. The cause for his incarceration was not his numerous marriages of course, but rather that after he had fallen bankrupt he had resorted to counterfeiting banknotes. This was discovered by a grocer he dealt with, and although he tore the banknote he had discovered to be counterfeit into pieces, it was collected back together and confirmed a forgery.
As for stories concerning love, they were told with no shame. Among the cases presented by Al-Ahram in lengthy investigations was an incident that took place with Auda Sweilem Auda, whose name reveals his Bedouin roots. Auda had abducted Nasra Salem Farag, the daughter of his paternal cousin, whom he loved to the point of madness, as the investigation put it. "He perpetually pestered her with proposals of marriage whenever he saw her. It so happened that the girl had filled her earthenware jug at the canal next to her town (Kafr Al-Shubek) when Auda met her returning and asked her to flee with him to Cairo. Nasra refused, and he tried to tempt her with some sweets but to no avail. So he hit her and forcefully assaulted her in the middle of the street. She called for help until a villager passing in the direction rescued her. She ran until she reached home, shaking."
The story did not end there. One of Nasra's neighbours knocked on her door and informed her that her father had been shot. She rushed to the location her neighbour had told her the attack had occurred, at the mill of Abbas Mansour, but she found no one there other than the hare-brained "lover" and some of his friends. He beat her, and then left her locked up in the mill, threatening her if she didn't respond to his request. They left after they had locked her in with a key, but she escaped from a window and returned home, reporting the incident to the first village guard she met. When Auda learnt that the village chief and security men had begun to search for him, he left the village and never returned.
Another story was about the undersecretary of one of the capital's districts who had a stable married life until he was fired from his job. He began to exhaust his wife with his demands, a situation that ended in divorce that appears to have been against his wishes. He later returned to their home wielding a large knife and attacked her with numerous stabs. After he was arrested by the police, another human interest story was discovered -- that his wife was barren and had purchased a newborn from a midwife who claimed that she had found the child abandoned on Abdin Street. She sold the baby to the wife for LE5, and thus the case became one of two crimes rather than one. The husband was tried for one, the wife for the other.
A third story published by Al-Ahram under the title "Naive wife takes revenge from her husband and marries another while still under his marital custody" told a long tale. In short, its heroine was married to a man called Abdullah and lived with him the best life a married couple can. Their marriage had taken place after a violent love story that Al-Ahram described as "following an intense mutual inclination to each other."
Yet as often happens, boredom entered the marriage some years later and Abdullah married a young girl "in secrecy from his wife," and effectively abandoned her. There remained no connection between them other than the sending of a certain amount at the end of every month. She opened a case against him in the court of Islamic law in which she claimed that her husband was an "absentee". She brought forth two false witnesses who testified to that, and the court ruled for her divorce, following which she married someone else.
The second part to this story was that her first husband grew tired of his young wife after some time and decided to return to "the old one". He went to her to apologise, and she replied that it was she who had to apologise, for she had married someone else. The husband was astonished by this situation and explained that her marriage was null, but she replied sarcastically, "tell that to the judge, he's the one who ruled for my divorce." He believed her and went to the prosecutor to accuse his wife and the two witnesses she had brought to forge their testimony, and a case was brought forward over her second marriage.
Drug smuggling, in turn, was also the object of interest for the incidents investigations in Al-Ahram. It seems that the drug trade at that time was a source of enormous profit, a fact indicated by a number of these investigations. Among them was the case of smugglers who brought a large quantity with them on a train arriving from Palestine. They threw it into the desert, into a car with open doors, until a plane was to come from Port Said and return with it a short period after its take-off, making it look as though it had been on a brief excursion. Yet wind prevented the airplane from participating in the operation, and the police, who were aware of the plan, were able to find the bag. It contained 37 kilogrammes of opium and two kilogrammes of hashish, at a value of nearly LE2,000.
Another was that published under the headline "An international drug case with a connection to Egypt". Louis Lyons had been arrested in Paris on the charge of trading in drugs. "He is the owner of a restaurant in the French capital and owns a splendid manor in the countryside." The Egyptian government had previously reported Lyons and had accused him 10 years earlier of shipping 200 kilogrammes of opium to Egypt in crates with hidden compartments.
Yet the investigations were not limited to drug dealers; they also took interest in addicts. This led the Al-Ahram editor to the Al-Turgoman shantytown that was referred to as the neighbourhood of drug victims. There he saw addicts injecting each other with heroin, and narrated how "some sleep during the day and go out at night to beg and steal. Some panhandle and some sell lottery tickets. You might find, for example, an effendi holding lottery tickets in his hand, offering them to you and claiming he had been a civil servant or a big merchant and that fate had brought him ill fortune, while he in fact is passionate about drugs and tries by all means to stir sympathy and wrest a piastre, not to eat with but to purchase heroin, while depriving himself of food and drink."
The editor of Al-Ahram 's incidents page also mentioned that during this visit he learned some of the secret terminology that addicts use to communicate with dealers. "For example, when an addict goes to a heroin dealer's home, he knocks on the door and a voice responds from inside asking who is knocking. The addict replies, 'open, oh melim,' and the dealer understands from this password that he is an addict and not a policeman. Before leaving, the dealer yells to the watchmen outside and when one of them replies 'safe', that means that the path is free of policemen and the addict leaves with peace of mind." But what peace of mind!
At that early time, dogs were used to apprehend drugs, and apparently every time one dog called "Howl" succeeded in apprehending one of the operations, the newspapers applauded him for the unusual work he did.
The crimes of charlatans and trickery also had its share in the "incident investigations". Regarding the former, Al-Ahram took great interest in what it described as "the brilliant charlatan". She entered homes raving in incomprehensible speech and then screamed at their inhabitants, "why are you sitting there like that? You are utterly poor and miserable folk! You ought to be rich, with lots of money." The she would order one of the sitting women to bring her money from a nearby wardrobe.
The lady of the house would obey, going and bringing a small sum of money. The charlatan would tell the women gathered around her that she would turn every piastre of it into a pound. Then she would mumble softly and ask the women present to cover their faces so that the "genie leader" would not see them. When they would uncover their faces, they would find no trace of the woman.
As for crimes of trickery, they usually took place against villagers whose appearance indicated that they had come to the big city for the first time. Among them was the story of a villager who was passing before a shop and found two people in a fight. The reason told to him was that one of them owed LE2 to the other, but only had a LE10 note. He volunteered to break the note for them with the change he had, but before he received the money, the lights went out and he found himself outside the shop with the door closed. He screamed for help, but no one came to his rescue.
Villagers got their own in a naïve way as was narrated in another investigation with some of the residents in villages near the capital. They formed gangs who went into the city to rent bicycles and then never returned with them, having gone back to the countryside to use or sell them.
At the close of every year, the incidents editor published an annual report prepared by the capital's chief of police. As an example, let's take the report of 1937. There were 7,100 policemen in the city, 6,990 of whom were Egyptians and the remaining being foreigners. During the five previous years, 3,347 traffic accidents had occurred, 79 of which caused fatalities. The solution presented was to reduce the movement of buses by changing their routes. There were 1,507 incidents of pickpocketing, an increase of 205 from the previous year, 1936.
The report then swerved from that to what it called "curious crimes". Among them was the case of a worker who was fired from his job in the British army's canteen. He had the key, however, and so returned at night to steal bottles of whiskey, cigarettes and matches. Another was the case of a janitor in an engineering company who intentionally set fire to the depository he was meant to guard and which held LE23,000, all to cover his crime of stealing LE27.